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Topic: kids and swimming lessons (Read 10639 times)

It varies from state to state and between public and private school as to getting lessons at school. Some state do, others don't.

Most parents will put their kids into some sort of swimming classes because with something like 80% of our population living near the ocean it's a wise move. I live inland and still most people will have their kids in swimming classes before they start school. Most centres will have classes running from as young as 6 weeks.

Most school will use a public pool. Only top private high schools will have pools and some unis might (none in my city do). Only primary school I know that have pools are actually accessing the corresponding high school's pool.

Way back in the 1960s, my school district did have lessons for kids in Grade 5 (we had to be bussed to the new municipal indoor pool). But I think it was pretty short-lived. Most of us had already had some sort of lessons at some point, anyway.

When my kids were young, there were no "free" school lessons. However, the lessons provided by the city (there was one indoor pool, and two outdoors) were very good. Originally, I was wanting to sign them up for the highest levels (where they'd learn all the strokes) and got "mom, Really?" At least they'd learned the front-crawl......

I'm a bit surprised about some of the responses here. I'm in Canada, and I definitely had the impression that most middle and high schools in the US had their own indoor pools.

It varies from state to state and between public and private school as to getting lessons at school. Some state do, others don't.

Most parents will put their kids into some sort of swimming classes because with something like 80% of our population living near the ocean it's a wise move. I live inland and still most people will have their kids in swimming classes before they start school. Most centres will have classes running from as young as 6 weeks.

<B>Most school will use a public pool. </B>Only top private high schools will have pools and some unis might (none in my city do). Only primary school I know that have pools are actually accessing the corresponding high school's pool.

Yes this! It's not that schools in Aus all have pools - that's actually very rare in my experience! But because swimming and water safety are such a big part of life here, there are lots of public pools and most schools will utilize the public facilities.

I was lucky enough to go to a primary school where the former headmistress' husband was a builder. In the late 80s, he installed a swimming pool on the school grounds, and a few years later (soon after I started in '94), he returned to build a glass roof over the top. It was like swimming in a gigantic greenhouse! Not so bad when it was cloudy, but when it was really sunny (that one week a year), it was unbearably hot.

So, we all had swimming lessons, from the age of 4/5 to 11. It was a very small school - only about 100 students in total, split into 1 class per year, so there was plenty of room for a class to learn together.

I went to a private secondary school, and we did have an indoor swimming pool. However, swimming was totally optional. I did choose it every summer (over rounders or tennis), but no one was forced to swim. I also did lifeguard training, which was available to anyone in y10 and above (age 15 and up).

My New Zealand primary and intermediate schools both had swimming pools, as did all the surrounding primary and intermediates. Not sure about the high schools; mine didn't. I'm not sure if swimming was compulsory through PE. I'm going to assume it was, as I did every year that I attended those schools. My primary school used to open the pool during lunch hour in the summer terms for those who wanted to swim/cool off.

I also did private swimming lessons before I started school. It was a necessity as I was drawn to water like a magnet, so it was in my best interests to be able to save myself.

My high school in Australia didn't have a pool, and swimming wasn't an option. Considering the climate and lifestyle where I live (in Aust) I was rather astounded to discover that schools didn't have pools.

My children's Australian primary school did an intense swimming course for year 1 and 2 students. They attended a lesson every day for 2 weeks. None of the local schools have their own pools, so they were all bussed to public pools. Frankly I don't think these lessons were worth the time or effort required. I can't think of a single child who went from zero ability to confident swimmer. It was mainly a chance for the stronger swimmers to do fun things like races, practice diving etc.

Most families I know organise private/group lessons for their children from a young age, usually beginning prior to school age.

Aussie here. I think how swimming is taught in school has changed since I was a kid. When I was in primary school , it wasn't in the curriculum but you could op in for it. It was taught once a week and went for an hour and a half. the kids were bussed into a local pool.In high school we did it and it was compulsory up till year 9. It was only for the first term and went by the Royal life saving society's swim and survive program. I spent 2 years on second level as every year I had to re do everything on level 2 (I couldn't complete level 2 in 1 semester). The pool was horribly overcrowded with 80- 100 children competing for the same space.

With my boys .In primary school they had 2 weeks of intensive swimming lessons (every day for 2 weeks) a year. It was good for teaching skills but I found that they tended to forget what they learned from one year to the next. They went to a local public pool in which they were bussed or walked (depending on the distance to the pool) In high school it wasn't compulsory.

My high school had an indoor pool. I think all of the neighboring high schools did, too. The high schools all had swim teams. Swimming was a unit in high school gym classes which were mandatory for at least 2.5 years (I think). The community recreation group used the pool for swimming lessons for younger kids. These classes had a small fee for residents of our city. We did not have a community outdoor pool, but the neighboring communities did. There was also a YMCA a few suburbs away.

My parents paid for me and my sister to have swimming lessons when we were young. I hated them at the time, but I am so glad I had them.

I was lucky enough to go to a primary school where the former headmistress' husband was a builder. In the late 80s, he installed a swimming pool on the school grounds, and a few years later (soon after I started in '94), he returned to build a glass roof over the top. It was like swimming in a gigantic greenhouse! Not so bad when it was cloudy, but when it was really sunny (that one week a year), it was unbearably hot.

When my parents lived in the UK swimming lessons were done at the nearby very posh girl's boarding school. Their pool was in a converted greenhouse that would have been in pride of place of the fancy garden when it was still a very posh estate. In winter all the glass fogged up since the pool was heated!

We had an in-ground pool growing up (in Texas). None of the schools of the midish-large city I grew up in had a pool. I think because it was assumed that you either a) had a pool at your house b) had a pool at your apartment c) had a close friend that had access to a pool. I'm not even sure that the city had a pool. The University had an Olympic indoor pool and a largish outdoor one.

My training consisted of: 1) Dad taking me to the public pool when I turned 4 and we lived in Minnesota, and me refusing to jump in (Why he wouldn't let me walk in is beyond me)

2) Being told "you should close your mouth when you swim" after my first swimming experience was jumping off the end of a really long dock because I didn't want to shown up by the little boy. Apparently I drank half the lake on the way to shore.

3) Daily or twice daily swim lessons at G.S. summer camp,

4) Junior High, my parents hired the neighbor H.S. boy to teach me diving. He was on the dive team, but couldn't teach.

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The other suburb I live in now although the same size does sort-of have pools. They put the city park pools next to the really large high schools. During school hours, only the kids have access to the pools.

Our 3-year-old, has been taking lessons since she was 6 months. The summers are great because those high school kids are great teachers.

US here, no primary schools have pools that I've ever seen, a couple of middle schools depending on ages served, and many of the highschools I've seen.

But I've never seen school mandated swim lessons. We never got our kids lessons, we just spent enough time at the open-to-the-public highschool pool for them to learn to tread and dog paddle well enough to use the high dive with confidence

I'm in Finland. I think that we had swimming every year at school, maybe twice a week for some weeks. I've never heard of schools having pools, we used the public pool in the town. The lessons were pretty much like PE in general, mostly killed all my desire to do the activity. I think that it was mostly about technique, I remember everyone waiting by the side of the pool and a few students at a time demonstrating a stroke and the teacher giving critique. I don't remember there being anything about water safety or saving drowning people but it's possible that I've just repressed the memories, I hated swimming in school. The pool was pretty nice though and after lessons we got to use the water slides and hot tubs and things like that.

I grew up between two lakes and I loved water as a child. Our summer cottage was near a beach and I spent a lot of time in the water playing. When I was 5 I had swimming lessons (a "swimming school" offered by the town) in the beginning of June in a lake and it was so cold that none of the students or teachers would get in the water but I didn't mind. We used to go swimming with my friends later, unsupervised maybe when we were 10.

Just thought to add, a lot of towns do not have public pools - at least not supported by taxes. When we went to the YMCA we had to go into "the city" about 20 miles and then pay for our memberships. Small towns and poor school districts are less likely to have pools for their schools - either the money isn't there, the population doesn't justify it, whatever.

People have mentioned being close to water as the reason why swimming classes are so common where they live and Michigan is actually a state with tons of access to water. Never mind that you are always pretty close to one Great Lake or another, there are tons of "little" lakes and rivers.

I grew up in a medium-sized town with a public tax-funded pool, I'm not sure what people do in smaller places that might not have pools and quick googling doesn't tell me. I did find out that 5 % of schools don't offer swimming lessons at all, at least in primary schools. Swimming is part of the curriculum though, so I don't know how they get out of it.

Just thought to add, a lot of towns do not have public pools - at least not supported by taxes. When we went to the YMCA we had to go into "the city" about 20 miles and then pay for our memberships. Small towns and poor school districts are less likely to have pools for their schools - either the money isn't there, the population doesn't justify it, whatever.

People have mentioned being close to water as the reason why swimming classes are so common where they live and Michigan is actually a state with tons of access to water. Never mind that you are always pretty close to one Great Lake or another, there are tons of "little" lakes and rivers.

This was part of the Jim Crow legacy as well - many cities decided to shut down their pools rather than be forced to allow black kids to swim there. In cities that did that, you're more likely to find a couple of private alternatives.